That’s not how that [communization] shit works…

Khawaga, it was not me who first joined you, Craftwork, and S. Artesian together in some kind of group, it was S. Artesian. I don't know what your relationships are, I was following S. Artesian's lead.

I don't have any confidence in this theory, but for the fact that I agree that there should be no transitional stage (then again, that's pretty anarchist... whether that's possible is a completely different question). Again, that is ascribing views to me that I do not hold. Just stop that. I have asked you repeatedly.

You're the one that continually raises this to some principle or position or a blueprint for revolution/communism and finds examples of this in history. That is all on you, not me.

And if you're simply asking whether the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then well, sure, but what's the point of discussing that? We all fucking know that revolutions can lead to outcomes that are far from good. Did you even bother to read the part where I said that there is stuff to learn from the Russian revolution? That should've been more than enough of an answer to " Does history not give you any pause for thought in your confidence in this theory?"

S. Artesian. Do you consider your politics and your predictions about how things will (apparently) work in a 'proper' revolution based on experience or actual knowledge, or faith/belief?

Guess you haven't been paying attention. My "politics"-- as I have explained my identification as a Marxist is based on actual knowledge of Marx's critique, actual knowledge of how capital accumulates, actual knowledge of the law of value, actual knowledge of value production, actual experience with the substitution of the means of production for living labor, actual knowledge and actual experience of how the bourgeoisie react when a)profit falls b) the private ownership of the means of production is threatened.

My predictions? What predictions? That workers' councils or a functional equivalent are necessary (but not always sufficient) to the revolutionary struggle?-- that's based on historical knowledge, both immediate-- as in Chile 1973, and distant as in Russia 1917. That class collaboration is the death of revolutionary struggle? Historical knowledge, immediate again as in Chile 1973; and distant as in Spain 1936, Vietnam 1937, Vietnam 1945, Greece...Egypt...South Africa since 1994....

Or do you mean the prediction that uneven and combined development in capitalism propels the working class to the forefront of revolutionary upheavals even when the "material level of society" does not seem capable of supporting that struggle? That's historical knowledge.

As for faith and belief...I believe pretty much that its better to be lucky than good. High explosive rounds don't find the lucky. Wait, that's not based on faith either........sorry, guess I come up empty in the faith department, and base even my beliefs on knowledge and experience. .

Khawaga, does communization theory eliminate the transitional stage, or are the commmunizers deluding themselves or others? This has been the question all along, perhaps phrased differently in places, but check the original post.

If, as you say, you want deeper discussion, then it is this question that you should address, instead of repeating that I am accusing you of being what you are not and repeating 'just stop it'. The question is simple. You are turning it into an attack on you. You are mistaken to do this. I am just responding to the words you write. I am sure you are a fine, decent, and lovely person.

No thanks, no deeper discussion desired. Don't care to waste time dealing with your speculative concerns.

And BTW

Quote:

Khawaga, it was not me who first joined you, Craftwork, and S. Artesian together in some kind of group, it was S. Artesian. I don't know what your relationships are, I was following S. Artesian's lead.

is another example of you not paying attention. I was responding to El Psy who put us together in the mash up.

One more reason no further discussion is required. You just make shit up.

S. Artesian. No I never actually wanted to debate with you because I thought I was on a libertarian communist website (lol, I am just saying this as a joke to wind you up, even though you don't need any more winding up! - I am sorry, I couldn't help myself!) , but it seems that yours is the strongest voice here on these kinds of matters. No worries. Libcom is an awesome repository of texts and I hope this continues.

Yes, I have looked back through the posts and indeed you are right that epc grouped you and Khawaga together first, and you repeated that grouping in a post. I got that wrong. It must great for you that you can seize on one error in one of my posts to further damn me, but really, you are missing the point again as usual. Yes, you and Craftwork are indeed divergent as, on the Chris Harman thread, he calls your posts 'idiotic', which is a bit rude. So maybe you are not the comrades I saw you as?

But you still haven't answered the question I set, which is not a problem, since I hoped others would engage with it too, but that doesn't seem to happen here, and you hide (?) behind a wall of really quite sad invective. Do you hate me more than the Romans? You are a strange and bitter fish, but I wish you well, S. Artesian.

Too busy to respond to everything but wanted to say: when I 'bunched everyone up' my intention was to highlight how almost anyone who doesn't actively reject holding power can end up holding it, and I think even me and Tom would end up as Stalin or Mao if we were given that kind of power.

It may not be fair to call anyone Leninist when they reject the label. But supporting forced collectivization (Artesian) I think is worthy enough of the label totalitarian or authoritarian or whatever.

It may not be fair to call anyone Leninist when they reject the label. But supporting forced collectivization (Artesian) I think is worthy enough of the label totalitarian or authoritarian or whatever.

Where have I ever supported forced collectivization?

I supported forced requisitioning of grain supplies during the Russian civil war. That's not forced collectivization.

You're "too busy" all right. Too busy to even actually read, much less understand, what someone writes.

I gotta say, the OP kinda hit the nail on the head with an apt characterization of the communization 'politics' (poetry?).

But I think there is an interesting connection to anarchism and a shallow critique of Lenin here as well. There is an idea of 'self-' that is pretty repulsive if reflected on; what does self-organization mean? What does self-activity mean?

In the context of Marx's thought it appears to mean that which one is not compelled to do by force exogenous to the individual; but simultaneously, we have to reconcile the individual to society. There is a conundrum; what gives the individual freedom is the material obligation incumbent upon each of us in the global division of labor; but at the same time, that role confronts us as an alien force; the state on the one hand (law, force) and hunger as a result of non-participation in the 'economy' on the other. Of course the state and law lay the groundwork in a sense for the economic conditions; the rules, which reflect the *effective* power of the capitalist class.

The shallow critique of Lenin, or WITBD and what is really the general socialist strategy of Kautsky, the SPD, the SPA, etc. of the *active and forceful agitation, education, and organization* of workers into unions and political parties is that they elided a critique of the role of authority. The abolition of value is the accumulation of individual conditions of freedom for each particular worker, added up to mean the freeing of all workers. Because the 'old workers movement' ignored this, they substituted 'conquering state-power' as a means for liberating the worker, instead of focusing on the 'self-activity' of worker liberation itself.

Engels' concepts of necessity and freedom are instructive;

The leap is not from natural necessity, to total individual freedom, what Kautsky points out would require "men to become angels" but the leap from *social forces* acting on humanity *as natural forces* to humanity *recognizing* necessity in order to organizing production and distribution in accordance with it.

Kautsky eventually rejects this possibility, interestingly enough, in his reconciliation with Bernstein and Evolutionary Socialism. But Engels' ideas do pose an interesting distillation of the relationship between the abolition of wage labor/value and freedom.

The condition isn't that each individual is made free through some distinct political law or the granting even of a singular discrete right to do xyz. It's the result of a combined technical and social change; a process that one might *call* communization without ever coming closer to describing in effective detail, let alone bringing to fruition.

My understanding, especially of Endnotes messy ideas, is that communization is one arguement about the movement from the capitalist form of property to the communist form and argues that the *social* relations must change first and take first priority. This is nonsense. You cannot conceive of a change in social relations without a change in technical relations and vice versa. We can *dream* all day about a world communist society based on 15th century agricultural techniques, but do we really think it would be at all possible?

In reality, it mirror's Maoism and Stalinism; forceful collectivization *as a means to technical development* through surplus export in order to invest in capital goods resulted in gigantic human catastrophe, not to mention leading nowhere but *back to basically capitalist social relations of production* (clearly in Russia, in a mitigated form in China). It's arguable that there was not an effective mastery of social forces because these countries were so isolated as to make them subject to the de facto dictates of capitalist hegemony. Nevertheless that doesn't absolve the dictators of responsibility for their purges and their failed responses to those circumstances.

If the challenge of leaping from necessity to freedom is not accomplished by the *immediate or overnight* abolition of the form of value; e.g. the wage relation; then communization is more or less a dead letter. I certainly think it is. The abolition of the wage-labor relation (in the direction of communism) is contingent upon many conditions, technical and social working together, and also on broad global conditions; for one it requires a large degree of economic and defense self-sufficiency; the threat of capitalist imperial interference is real, and contributes to the development of bureaucracy and military domination of government in places where these politics might take hold.

It's also worth pointing out that there can be the abolition of the wage-labor condition without transcending capitalism toward communism. Slavery is a condition where laborers don't sell they're labor power in a market exchange for a wage; but it ain't communism!

Are you saying that Marx identifies communism as the 'realm of freedom' alone?

In my interpretation, Marx's categorizations state that the realm of necessity must be organized and controlled (as you seem to imply at one point) for the attainment and maintenance of the realm of freedom. It isn't a question, in Marx, of there simply being no necessity in communism:

Quote:

The realm of freedom […] can only flourish with [the] realm of necessity as its basis. The reduction of the working day is the basic prerequisite.
Capital Vol 3

This is in line with Marx's identification of all societies as being societies of production (modes of production), and humans expressing their humanity through their labor.

Can I also, more importantly, just clarify on another point of yours?

Are you saying, as Marx did, in fact, that there is no possibility of communism without a transitional stage (by pointing out that the communizers are mistaking how 'consciousness' is formed)?

I think it is interesting that Marx eventually saw a need for a transitional stage, not just in order to defeat the forces of reaction, but also to alter the mode of production, which would, simultaneously, as you say, develop a dominant communist consciousness amongst the mass of the people. Of course, this altering of the mode and its concurrent ideological effects is deemed to take place in the period of the 'withering away' (or dying out) of the state, which does not have a definite time frame. In this transition period, as Marx and Engels write in the Communist Manifesto, the worker's state will control all the organs of the state and all the means of production, and workers who are able will have to work for wages, be taxed, etc. It is only through this process that the forces of production can be increased "as rapidly as possible" (Communist Manifesto) and the mode of production revolutionized so that it becomes a communal mode of production. In this process, since, as Marx says, people make history, but not of their own pleasing, the population will attain a fully communist consciousness.

Of course, here the dilemma remains: the revolutionaries seem to already have this consciousness to an effective extent, in advance of changed circumstances, or, at least, they apparently know how to facilitate the communist mode of production. One is forced to ask: were the nascent bourgeoisie aware that they were going to replace the old mode of production and take over the state as a class? History would indicate that they were not aware of their destiny. The communist revolutionaries, however, are clearly (apparently, or so they claim) aware of their destiny. If this is the case, what does it mean in regard to their involvement in politics, class struggle, and revolution?

So, yes, to bring it back to my central question in this post: if that is what you are saying, it seems that the abandonment of the notion of the transitional state is absurd theoretically and impossible practically.

In "the law of value in its simplest terms" thread, post 100, I wrote to S. Artesian:

Quote:

My intention was never to debate Marxist-Leninists (I presume you would identify yourself in this way, or at least close to this?) but to debate those who, in my opinion, think they have escaped that sphere, or that ‘Leninist loop’.

In the following post S. Artesian wrote:

Quote:

I do not characterize myself as a Leninist. I am not a Leninist. I do not accept the "fundamentals" of Leninism as generally preached by those who claim to be Leninists. I think Lenin's notion of a party is fundamentally flawed; and that of a vanguard party even worse. I think Lenin' analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia is mistaken where it isn't inaccurate; likewise with his "theory" of imperialism. Moreover, I think the record of the 3rd International during and post-Lenin is horrible. Is there any class struggle they didn't fuck up? I can't seem to find one.

S. Artesian then stated again that he is not a Leninist in posts 7, 17, 21, and 29 in the ‘That’s not how that shit works’ thread.

But what you say is confusing because you do use Lenin quite a lot, and it is hard to tell what you think when you pick on certain things. So, for example, you use Lenin’s notion of Dual Power, and when I suggested in colloquial English that you seem to think that Lenin was a ‘great guy’ (post 20) when he wrote that, but a stuff-up later. Your objection is that you have never said that Lenin was a “great guy” "ever, in any year" – is it a case of: “Phew, at least I never ever have used the words “great guy”!? But I would think that if you like the ‘program’ of Dual Power that Lenin wrote, then you must think he had his good points?

Also on the Anti-Capital blog, which you are a part of, someone/you (?) write:

Quote:

Revolution, in Lenin’s words is “the festival of the oppressed.” Everybody, well almost everybody, knows how much Marx and Engels loved to party.

What is exactly meant by this paragraph, even after having read the rest of the article, is beyond me, by the way - but it is the use of Lenin that is pertinent.

The full quote, from Lenin is:

Quote:

Revolutions are the locomotives of history, said Marx. Revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as at a time of revolution. At such times the people are capable of performing miracles, if judged by the narrow, philistine scale of gradual progress. But the leaders of the revolutionary parties must also make their aims more comprehensive and bold at such a time, so that their slogans shall always be in advance of the revolutionary initiative of the masses, serve as a beacon, reveal to them our democratic and socialist ideal in all its magnitude and splendour and show them the shortest and most direct route to complete, absolute and decisive victory. Let us leave to the opportunists of the Osvobozhdeniye bourgeoisie the task of inventing roundabout, circuitous paths of compromise out of fear of the revolution and of the direct path. If we are compelled by force to drag ourselves along such paths, we shall be able to fulfil our duty in petty, everyday work also. But let ruthless struggle first decide the choice of the path. We shall be traitors to and betrayers of the revolution if we do not use this festive energy of the masses and their revolutionary ardour to wage a ruthless and self-sacrificing struggle for the direct and decisive path. Let the bourgeois opportunists contemplate the future reaction with craven fear. The workers will not be frightened either by the thought that the reaction promises to be terrible or by the thought that the bourgeoisie proposes to recoil. The workers are not looking forward to striking bargains, are not asking for sops; they are striving to crush the reactionary forces without mercy, i.e., to set up the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

Does the 'program' outlined after the ‘festival of the oppressed’ quote appeal to you? Does what Lenin wrote in State and Revolution appeal to you? Or do you find what he wrote, as many do, to be invalidated by the Bolshevik seizure of worker’s control during the period 1917 to 1921 (as outlined in, for example, Maurice Brinton’s book)?

Also on the Anti-Capital blog is a piece by “Mhou” that identifies Lenin as the ‘major figure’ of the Russian proletarian revolution:

Quote:

There is nothing inherently unique to Babushkin’s story, other than his early association with the major figure of the proletarian revolution of October 1917. His personal political maturation and development as a revolutionary was mirrored in an unknown number of individuals, both within and outside of the party’s ranks, who together facilitated, organized, led and implemented the proletarian revolution at all levels throughout the Russian Empire. They were the architects of proletarian dictatorship.

That is what we ought to remember about 1917. It wasn’t a shot in the dark; it didn’t strike like lightning without warning. The revolution was organized and was being organized for decades before it happened. It wasn’t carried out by a handful of formal party leaders. It was carried out by workers like Babushkin.

Earlier in the article it shows how Lenin used the story of Babushkin to promote the image of the heroic Party (led by Lenin):

Quote:

[Lenin’s] posthumous appraisal of Babushkin as the pride of the Party and enduring references to him in works which were written over 15 years after his murder by the Tsarist generals.

It says everything, and I mean everything, that needs to be said about your understanding, lack of understanding, inability to understand the importance of Marx's critique of capital and its linkage to the actual development of the Russian Revolution that you would concentrate on the one reference to Lenin describing revolution as a festival of the oppressed, ignoring the central focus of the article-- which is the demonstration of the "opportunities" and burdens uneven and combined development created for, in, and through the revolution itself.

Everything. In that anarchist universe of yours, historical materialism doesn't exist; the actual development of capitalism, in its impulses to expansion its conflicts with its own accommodations to pre-existing relations of land and labor are of no importance. That the origin and the resolution of this configuration of capitalism propels the proletariat to move beyond the "democratic" form, beyond the "liberty" and "freedom" of the property-holder, beyond national boundaries isn't worth a mention. To you. By you.

You don't have a thing to say about the material forces at work in the Russian Revolution. Instead you want to know if Lenin's words "appeal to me," as if you're making a psychological evaluation based on my likes and dislikes.

Quote:

Also on the Anti-Capital blog is a piece by “Mhou” that identifies Lenin as the ‘major figure’ of the Russian proletarian revolution:

What? You don't think Lenin qualifies as a major figure of the revolution?

Again you miss the point of the article, even when you quote it- which was the Russian Revolution was made by human beings whose social consciousness was determined by their social being. It was not a palace revolution; nor a revolution made be intellectuals (as if such a thing were even, or ever, possible) but made by a class organizing itself for power.

Why do I collaborate with Mhou? Because our disagreements about Lenin are immaterial compared to our agreement about the revolution itself, namely: "That is what we ought to remember about 1917. It wasn’t a shot in the dark; it didn’t strike like lightning without warning.The revolution was organized and was being organized for decades before it happened. It wasn’t carried out by a handful of formal party leaders. It was carried out by workers like Babushkin."

And that agreement itself is dwarfed by our agreement on the methods, tactics, strategy, and program required to advance the prospects for proletarian revolution here and now.

Yes, in that 'festival of the oppressed' article I can't work out if you (or the writer) are for the Trotskyist categories of 'uneven and combined development' and 'permanent revolution' or against them. It's not well written, which isn't that good for your purposes I reckon.

I am presuming, then, from your post here, these are terms you find useful and appropriate? So, I am nudged to ask you again: do you identify yourself as a Marxist-Leninist? Which 'tradition' do you feel you belong to?

So, the article by Mhou was NOT intended to perpetuate the myth of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party as initiated by, as Mhou's article confirms, Lenin himself? Wow! Have I entered an alternate universe where everything means something else?

Was the "proletarian revolution of October 1917" (Mhou) the spectacular and gritty street fighting event that the Bolsheviks portrayed it as? Or was it a really skillful undercover placement of Bolsheviks in all the crucial institutions by that clever strategist, Trotsky? A series of events that were perhaps not as exciting or legend-inspiring as the Bolsheviks made out?

Admit it, don't blush, you have a soft spot for Lenin and Trotsky and their long years at the head of a party machinery that recognised that success for them lay in organization and discipline.

Certainly the tone and message of the Anti-Capital blog is very "military manoeuvres''. Bench presses for the revolution, comrades! Organized retreats and decisive attacks.

ME:
Also on the Anti-Capital blog is a piece by “Mhou” that identifies Lenin as the ‘major figure’ of the Russian proletarian revolution.

YOU:
What? You don't think Lenin qualifies as a major figure of the revolution?

You seem to have missed that Mhou is saying Lenin was 'THE' major figure, not 'A' major figure - a completely different thing. But still 'n' all, it looks like you are defending Lenin's role in the revolution, whereas the libertarian communist perspective does not defend Lenin's role at all in the revolution.

Mhou writes:

Quote:

There is nothing inherently unique to Babushkin’s story, other than his early association with the major figure of the proletarian revolution of October 1917

The editors over at The North Star are inviting readers to submit responses to ten (10) smoldering sub-sections of the single, eternally burning question for our movement: What Is To Be Done?

As much as this may sound like virtual Leninism, it isn’t; nothing Lenin did was virtual.

Indeed, TNS claims a pedigree, with papers to prove it, of being a departure from “Leninist orthodoxy.”

TNS finds its inspiration, mainly, in the work of the late Peter Camejo, former Green Party candidate for vice-president (part-time), and investment adviser (full-time). “Socially-responsible investing” was Pete’s shtick (as some would say on the Street), and he supposedly did it well.

When the North Star website was launched in 2012, it was never understood by its editors as offering a “line” that the left should follow. Its primary purpose was to defend a non-sectarian approach to building the left that departed from “Leninist” orthodoxy. In this, it was hearkening back to the original vision of Peter Camejo’s North Star Network of the early 80s that was the first attempt to unify a badly fractured left around a broad left program with the most important elements being rejection of the two-party system, the creation of a revolutionary party based in the working class and the need for a total transformation of American society based on socialism.

As much as this may sound like virtual Leninism, it isn’t; nothing Lenin did was virtual.

Makes it definitely sound like you have a lurve thing for Lenin.

And secondly, you appear to slag off The North Star in your words above. (Later you answer their questions in your article with the proviso: "Always willing, eager even, to add my $.02, particularly where it’s not wanted, I thought I’d take a stab at some answers" - so you are definitely mocking them.)

I can't work out why exactly, and I can't be bothered to research any more, except it sounds a bit like a sect thing ("who do we hate more than the Romans?") - and I suspect that you don't like The North Star because they are some kind of Trotskyist influenced group, and I get this from their use of the term "broad left".

But to the average person (particularly the average Lib. Com person) they surely look pretty much like the folk at Anti-Capital blog, because both are going for "the creation of a revolutionary party" - except you, or perhaps, to be exact in my quoting, Mhou, call it "the class political party".

I basically agree with what you posted. The point was that for Marx and Engels, mastery over the 'necessary' is a precondition for freedom; and in Marx and Engels, social reproduction of the species is necessary. As it is organized now, successful reproduction is an accident of the capitalist pursuit of profit. This means crisis, leaps and regression, war etc.

It means that the social conditions of humanity confront them as natural impositions, that people are governed by the social laws which they do not know they author.

Contrary to the communizationists who reduce the abolition of capitalism to the abolition of the value-form, Marx and Engels had a *positive* vision, on the basis of social relations. Indeed, the abolition of the form of value is only possible in any progressive sense, through global revolution (or damn close). Certainly we can imagine stagnation or *regress* however unlikely; e.g. "barbarism".

I have a "soft spot" as it were for the Russian Revolution. I have explicitly stated that I "endorse"-FWTW-- the April Theses; the actions of the Military Revolutionary Committee, etc. etc. There's nothing soft, or hidden, or camouflaged in my "affection" for the Russian Revolution.

Of course you couldn't work out if I'm for or against "uneven and combined development" and/or "permanent revolution" because a) you have no understanding what those are, other than your ability to "slag them off" as Trotskyist categories b) [and (a) itself is a function of this]-- you have zero grasp on how capitalism actually develops, how it absorbs and reflects pre-existing conditions, and reproduces them even as it subsumes them; why class even has relevance.

Quote:

But to the average person (particularly the average Lib. Com person) they surely look pretty much like the folk at Anti-Capital blog, because both are going for "the creation of a revolutionary party" - except you, or perhaps, to be exact in my quoting, Mhou, call it "the class political party".

Perhaps it does look that way to the "average Libcom person." I have no idea what the "average Libcom person looks like, so I'll leave that to others. I would expect that an average person would understand that the problem with The North Star is not that they too "call for a class political party"-- but in fact that they a)do not call for a class political party, eschewing at every opportunity the notion of class, substituting the call for a left political party.... b) TNS, at least as individuals endorse or promote at every opportunity repetitions of class collaboration-- a la Syriza, or Jezza, etc.

So, despite saying several times that you are not a Leninist, and writing this:

Quote:

I do not characterize myself as a Leninist. I am not a Leninist. I do not accept the "fundamentals" of Leninism as generally preached by those who claim to be Leninists. I think Lenin's notion of a party is fundamentally flawed; and that of a vanguard party even worse. I think Lenin' analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia is mistaken where it isn't inaccurate; likewise with his "theory" of imperialism. Moreover, I think the record of the 3rd International during and post-Lenin is horrible. Is there any class struggle they didn't fuck up? I can't seem to find one.

As I said, I support the Russian Revolution; I think the April Theses were a correct assessment of the course that needed to be taken to prevent the destruction of the revolution at the hands of reaction. I support, FWIW, the seizure of power at executed by the MRC of the Petrograd Soviet.

Do you support that seizure of power? Yes or no?

If you do, then that objectively makes you a supporter of Lenin, of Trotsky, a Leninist, a Trotskyist, a Bolshevik, as much as it does me.

If you don't....just say so... so I can ask you about your "soft spots" for provisional bourgeois governments, constituent assemblies, participation in inter-capitalist wars, etc.

That's the condition, answering that question, for any further discussion.

So yes or no, and if you can't give a yes or no answer to that question, to that critical moment in the history of class struggle, then you are truly a time-wasting dilettante.

I knew demanding a simple yes or no answer to a concrete question would bring this to a screeching halt. One more example of "anarchism as liberalism"-- philosophy of the abstract that capitulates to the world of the concrete.

Yeah, you are shocked about my vitriol and "deceit." I'll just bet you are. That's like the NRA being shocked about the rifle assault on the Republican congressional representatives.

Scamper away little boy, and go back to your Lego version of real r-r-r-r-evolution.

Khawaga, does communization theory eliminate the transitional stage, or are the commmunizers deluding themselves or others? This has been the question all along, perhaps phrased differently in places, but check the original post.

Seriously? That has been your question all along? No offence, but that's pretty banal. Of course, no theory, unless it becomes a material force in the behaviour of people, can do anything. Really, that goes without saying.

Khawaga.
Is it banal? I'm surprised you say that. What you are implying is that any theory can change the mode of production. You are ignoring things you wrote before. I don't get it.

So, can Christianity change the mode of production?

I am guessing you are upset because I have upset your Leninist Internet friend, Khawaga.

S. Artesian.
You are hilarious. You actually say that your question brings our 'discussion' to a 'screeching halt'!

It wasn't that, of course, it was that you were hiding your Leninism for some bizarre reason. And getting all sweary and abusive if anyone tried to understand what you were saying.

Your question above asks if I support Lenin and Trotsky seizing power in October 1917. You say that if I don't then I am a reactionary supporter of capitalism.

No one on Libcom should be having to have this kind of discussion with a Leninist. It's not what people come here for.

You are incredibly rude and aggressive. I am sad for you.

Yours is a strident and popular voice here on Libcom. This must give you comfort. I am amazed that your Leninism and rude behaviour has been allowed on here for so long.

Khawaga,
your (now tacit?) support for Artesian is hard to fathom. You say you don't support a transitional state, I presume you lean towards anarchism. Yet you make space for a Leninist who has lied about his Leninism. Baffling.

Khawaga.
Is it banal? I'm surprised you say that. What you are implying is that any theory can change the mode of production. You are ignoring things you wrote before. I don't get it.

No, I said precisely the opposite. No theory can change anything unless it becomes a material force in people.

Quote:

I am guessing you are upset because I have upset your Leninist Internet friend, Khawaga.

I am not upset at anything but your persistence to ascribe views to people that they don't have. Just like you did in the post I am replying to now.

Quote:

Khawaga,
your (now tacit?) support for Artesian is hard to fathom. You say you don't support a transitional state, I presume you lean towards anarchism. Yet you make space for a Leninist who has lied about his Leninism. Baffling.

What so I should just stop discussing with anyone that I disagree with (and believe me, Artesian and I disagree on plenty)? I mean, I disagree with plenty of what you've written on here, but does that mean I should stop talking with you? There are folks that's advocated why voting for labour is what anarchists should do, should I not engage?

And so what if I agree with Artesian on some things? I've met plenty of Leninist, social democrats and even liberals who proved to be far better comrades than self-professed anarchist when push came to shove. The label doesn't matter that much to me; it is far more important what you do. Whether Artesian would be a comrade when it came down to doing something, I have no idea and I suspect I will never find out.

Libcom is a discussion forum for various shades of libertarian communist types.

Libertarian communism is a direct and antagonistic response to Leninism.

People we may be involved with in industrial or community class struggles may be people of all sorts. And we often find that people with ideologies that we oppose turn out to be good and loyal, and people whose ideologies we agree with turn out to be weak and useless.

But Libcom is an Internet discussion forum. It is not Authoritarian Com (or that's not what it says it is on the packet anyway). The people here will have lots of various views of course, which is partly why it is a discussion forum. Such a discussion forum would be doing its best work if it helped move everyone's ideas forward, into new territory. It would be abandoning it's 'mission statement' if the forum just slid back explicitly into Leninism.

Onto another point, When you again write:

Quote:

No, I said precisely the opposite. No theory can change anything unless it becomes a material force in people.

This is indeed what you wrote before. What it means in plain English is that it is theory before material circumstance. This is the opposite of what Marx and any materialist would argue. This is why I referred to Christianity, as a theory. Either you are writing what you don't mean, or you don't know what you mean. Perhaps you need to slow down a bit in reading things and writing them?

But anyway, are we all happy with Artesian's bizarre repetition of 'I am not a Leninist' when in fact he is a Leninist, as even you seem to acknowledge?

If Libcom is to be open to Marxist-Leninists and such, because they are apparently useful to discuss with, then Libcom should send out invites to the various sects and organisations that currently exist, it would certainly increase the profile of Libcom. They would love a free ticket to practise their entryist tactics, and not have to hide their views to gain a foothold.

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